Last Flag Flying

I've been all three of these guys at various stages of my life.  In my youth, I was much like Larry "Doc" Shepherd - reserved and pensive.  A bit shy.  Nonetheless, I would rock the boat when pushed.  In earlier years, I was also like the Reverend Richard Mueller, a man of God ready to share the Word and near endlessly patient with people like Sal Nealon, the cranky, cynical cuss I tend to resemble these days.  For other folks, the evolution of personalities I've described would be inverted in their lives.  A closer, more honest examination would reveal I'm all three of these guys on any given day.

2017's LAST FLAG FLYING is considered an update of the characters seen in 1973's THE LAST DETAIL, although their names are different this time and Mueller and Nealon are Marine vets, not Navy.  Doc did wear the whites and was escorted to the brig by the other guys for a misdemeanor thirty years earlier.  Director Richard Linklater's film takes place in 2003, allowing for some jokes about older men and their apprehension to cell phones, the Internet, and Eminem songs.  But the humor is fairly minimal in this story of a man who has traveled back to Virginia to bury his twenty-one year old son, a Marine whom he was told died heroically in combat.  Doc seeks Sal and Richard to accompany him for the funeral, leading to a road trip during which there will be much squabbling among the disparate personalities.

Doc will (re?)learn that the government always seeks to save face.  That his son was not the war hero  described, rather one who was merely bringing back refreshments to his compadres when the bullets came. The Military insists on a burial at Arlington.   Doc wants to bury his son in civilian garb back home in New Hampshire.  After an initial failed attempt to do so, the trio (now escorted by Homeland Security) boards a train northward.  As as typical in a Linklater film, there are lots of heartfelt conversations.  They echo the emotions in this movie, which I felt were genuine and well earned.  The director does not achieve the grit Hal Ashby did in the earlier movie, opting instead for a more broad and cozy experience.

Actually, LAST FLAG FLYING is another of what they currently call "hangout" movies, where characters just sit and shoot the shit. Great for actors, of course, and the leads all do solid work.  Steve Carrell may fare best as Doc; there is almost none of the actor's usual comic shtick.  Laurence Fishburne is appropriately solemn as Mueller, a devoted Christian ashamed of his sordid past, but not above admitting he had some good times back in the day.   Bryan Cranston has the showiest role as Sal, a walking kvetch about every damned thing.  Sometimes he seems like he's overdoing it, but I've known people like him, and it's not too far off.

What was too much was Graham Reynolds' sappy score, which is always trying to cue the audience.  I wish we could've had Bob Dylan songs throughout instead of merely at the close.